Dumb "newbie" questions about montor calibration.

[ZoneIII]

I have some dumb newbie questions about monitor calibration. I apologize for asking such dumb questions and I hope I dont get blasted as so often happens in some forums with basic questions like this. Monitor calibration has not been a big issue for me until now because I am a large format photographer and I do not print digitally. I send my color film out to West Coast Imaging for drum scanning and printing and I still do my black and white printing in my darkroom.

I had been putting off building a website for years but a regular client of mine asked that I get something online for their buyers to view. So, in desperation, I quickly assembled a Jalbum portfolio, purchased a domain and hosting and had a basic portfolio up and running within one day. That is when I became concerned about monitor calibration.

Feedback indicated that my website images looked fine but one photographer friend of mine said they looked really bad on his calibrated monitor. I then looked at my website on my daughters monitor and they really did look bad. Then I posted a request that photographers on the APUG forums take a look at my website and let me know, in general, how my images appeared. All responses were that they looked fine with the exception of a couple images but those didn't look optimal on my monitor either and I knew that they need tweaking in PS. I was also informed that I my website pictures dont have an embedded color profile but I will fix that soon.

Anyway, I ordered a Spyder3Elite tool. It was delivered yesterday and I used it to calibrate my LCD monitor. But now I am more confused than ever and less confident about how my images look to others online and about the entire calibration process. I followed the simple calibration instructions and tried recalibrating at least 8-10 times. Images on my monitor now look darker and warmer. Even gray-scale b&w images look as if they were printed on a warm-tone paper although that is subtle. My website pictures now look dark, murky, and warm on my monitor. I realize that maybe thats because they were adjusted improperly before and now, with my monitor supposedly calibrated correctly, they look how they really are. But, if that is the case, then I dont understand why they look fine to other serious photographers who would easily recognize the bad look that they now have on my monitor.

Another weird thing: Im using a PC and Internet Explorer. In the past, the top of the page in IE (not he bar at the very top but everything else Im not sure what to call it but the entire IE background where it has the URL bar, search box, File Edit View Files Edit Help stuff, etc., was a light neutral gray. Same for the task bar on the bottom of my screen. It has always been neutral gray after calibrating in the past with Adobe Gamma or, more recently, with a fancier but similar program (Natural Color Pro) that came with my Samsung monitor. In fact, I had come to think that it was supposed to be neutral gray and I used that as a visual subjective reference after calibrating with Adobe Gamma or NCP. But after calibrating with the Spyder3, those things are now light brown. They could best be described as the color of sand or of tanned skin. As far as I can tell, their colors are not user adjustable in Appearance settings. So now Im wondering if they are an indication that something is seriously wrong with my Spyder calibration or if light brown is how they should appear.

My website is Dead Link Removed It looks bad to me now since using the Spyder. Some pictures look OK because they are bright but pictures that have more shadow areas are too dark and detail is lost in the shadows and the images look, in general, murky and dark. The thumbnails look worse than the images when they are opened up.

Im sorry for this long post but I would appreciate any advice anyone may have for me. I got the Spyder to get an objective baseline in my color management but now Im more confused and less confident than ever. I dont know if I am doing something wrong or if possibly my Spyder3 is defective.

 

[donbga]

Tom,

I've just looked at your website with IE 7 and Mozilla browsers and though I didn't look at every image the images look just fine to me.

From your description it sounds as though you have a bad calibration and profile causing your heart burn. Before you presume that the colorimeter is defective, you should make sure you understand how to use the software and hardware.

You did not mention what color temperature, display gamma, luminace and screen contrast you have your monitor profiled too. Secondly, what LCD technology is your display using? It could be that your LCD can't be profiled very well.

Your color temp should be set to 6500K, gamma 2.2 (not 1.8). Screen luminace is usually set according to ones viewing environment luminance, that is the luminace of the light that you judge your prints by, many people use a target range of 110 to 120 candles/m^2.
Monitor contrast varies as well but 300:1 or 400:1 are probably pretty good aim points.

Third do you have the latest display adapter and monitor drivers installed?

One of the nice things about the Gretag/Macbeth colorimeters is that a utility is provided that tests the proper functionality of their colorimeter. Perhaps Datacolor has one for the Spyder. Does your Spyder allow measurement of ambiet light during calibration and if so is the ambiet light level being used during calibration the same as during editing.

Before you recal and profile your display, reset the display dettings to their factory defaults and be sure the display has been turned on for at least an hour.

Hope this helps,

Don Bryant

 

[bobwysiwyg]

They look fine to me as well, nice pics by the way. I viewed them via Safari, running Win XP on an 19" HP flat panel monitor. No problems that I can see.

 

[ZoneIII]

Don,

Thank you very much. I do have the my calibration set to a Gamma of 2.2 and 6500K. I reset my monitor to it's default settings which is what the Spyder3Elite software recommends. The data shows that calibration was successful and everything is close to targets. My monitor is a Samsung 22" LCD and I keep all drivers up-to-date.

The first times I calibrated with the Spyder, my monitor showed my images to be very dark both on my PC and at my website. In fact, all images were dark. However, it images now look fine and the calibration obviously worked. The problem that I'm having isn't that the pictures are looking dark (now), it's that various bars, buttons, etc., including the top part of IE7 that has "File Edit View Favorites Tools Help," the URL box, search box, etc. (I'm not sure what it's really called) is now tan. It is set in my Appearance settings to be a light gray (something like 100,100,100). Those things always were light gray in the past by IE7 is interpreting them wrong since calibrating with the Spyder for some reason. When I went re-calibrated with a subjective program that came with the monitor (Natural Color Pro) that is like a fancy version of Adobe Gamma, or with Adobe Gamma, those things are their proper light gray. But then I recalibrate with the Spyder and they are tan again. I posted the same question that I posted here on photo.net and one of the people that responded is having the exact same problem

I don't mind the tan color at all and I could certainly live with that. But I am trying to figure out what this problem is happening so I can be sure that it won't affect images. BTW, the bars around the window that I am typing in right now (Hybrid Photo) are a light pinkish color on my monitor.

My best guess is that the Spyder is working and I know my other hardware is working because color has never been a problem. I just got the Spyder so I could keep things in careful calibration now that I am building a website. But images now appear to look fine. It seems that the problems have to do with IE7 and I remember reading that IE is not color managed. Yes, I know I should use Safari or Firefox and I am going to install them because I want to be able to test how my website will look in those browsers. I just never really had any issues with IE so I simply never used those other browsers.

 

[pschwart]

The web site images look great on my calibrated monitor. If the images don't have an embedded profile, try soft proofing in Photoshop using the monitor profile, and also try specifically selecting a profile like sRGB or Adobe98 and see how it look in Photoshop. Make sure you play with duplicates so you don't risk changing the bits I would suspect a config problem before thinking the Spyder is bad. Someone else can confirm but I suspect that most apps will display images using an sRGB color space if there is no embedded profle.

 

[rnwhalley]

Tom,

I just checked the web site (nice work) and all looks fine on my monitor (an old dell 19" LCD). Mine is calibrated using i1 and I am seeing good separation of tone.

From the description you give of your browser I wonder if this is a Windows display setting problem rather than a monitor calibration issue (I am assuming you are using Windows as you mention IE7). You don't give any operating system details but are you running Vista 64bit or XP 64bit? If you are, some software will switch display modes when it starts and this will affect colour. I used to have this problem when running iView on Vista 64 and the colour would be shocking with scroll bars etc all turning an odd green shade.

Even if your not running 64 bit anything it might be worth checking your display adapter settings as the calibration software could have adjusted or even disabled some of them.

 

[Diapositivo]

I have similar problems. My portable iBook (2004) has a cheap LCD screen and "calibrating" it worsens things a lot. I gave up on calibration on this machine.

My Windows machine has an Eizo FlexScan S1961, this is one of the lower series of Eizo. When I calibrate it with Spyder 2 I also get that warm tone that to my eyes looks wrong on the brownish - greenish side. I presume that I bought the calibrating device because I cannot trust my eyes, so I trust the calibration device and leave it as it is.

I would advice against the default settings for luminance. Many modern LCD have a very strong backlighting by default. If you cannot lower the luminance values of your monitor without affecting colour response, I suggest you raise your environmental light. Working with a monitor with too high a luminance value might in my opinion lead you to generate images that in other monitors will look generally dark. Besides, your eyes will generally be less strained if you reduce contrast between monitor and ambient light. I would advice against working in a completely dark room.

Images with no color profile embedded will be rendered by any browser as sRGB. If they are actually created in the sRGB space they will be rendered correctly on any browser.

If you create images in a wider gamut (e.g. AdobeRGB) in order to have a correct rendition two conditions must apply: you embed in the imagea colour profile, which specifies that colour values are to be interpreted within the AdobeRGB colour space; and the browser must honour this profile.

Safari on MacOS will honour profiles, if it finds them, by default.
Firefox on Windows will honour profiles only if color management was activated with a procedure which is described somewhere in Internet, it is easy to find. You have to change a configuration option hidden somewhere.

If your web site intends to show your work to a wide and unknown audience it is probably best to show images in the sRGB colour space.

If your web site intends to show your work to a known and restricted audience, which typically uses calibrated monitors and colour managed browsers, then you have the option to use a different colour space, but you surely must embed a profile in the image.

I find this page extremely useful and informative:

http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html#

Fabrizio

 

[iansand]

Nice work; looks absolutely fine to me, neutral greys. I have a calibrated monitor

 

[RalphLambrecht]

your images look great on my imac

 

[OzJohn]

Your photos look terrific on the calibrated Eizo monitor that I use for PS work and they also look pretty good on a cheap, uncalibrated laptop that I don't use for imaging. The telling thing is that the monochromes are a good black & white with no cast. OzJohn

 

[RalphLambrecht]

the B&W images on your site look very neutral and,therefore, fine on my system.

 

[Alan Klein]

I'm new with this setup. I'm looking on my NEC PA242W auto calibrated with the Spectraview II it came with. Set for gamma 2.2, sRGB and intensity of 140 cd/m2. White point is 6506K. Pictures look great. Bright and saturated (what film are you using?). BW's look rich with nice tonal range. Nice pictures.

 

[Ruben]

Normally, when calibrating for the first time, it's usual that the new calibration appears strange to you. Your eyes should get used to it after some minutes. If the image stays with a color tint, give it a try on another computer. That's what I did and had the same green tint to my calibration.
I contacted the Datacolor support and they replaced my Spyder in one week. Didn't even have to send mine, just had to send an image proving that i cut off my USB-cable.

My replacement works fine since then.

 

[Ruben]

Also looks fine on my system, calibrated with Spyder4Pro.

A calibration might look bad just after calibrating, your eyes need to get used to the new white balance.

If the problem persists, the hardware might be defective, then contact the support. ;-)